1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the translation machine which provides an electronic dictionary. More particularly, the invention relates to a translation machine which provides a capability of registering idioms and retrieving or translating the registered idioms.
2. Description of the Related Art
A commercially available language processing apparatus includes a wordprocessor for aiding in creating a document or a translation machine for translating a document written in a language into the translated counterpart written in another language. Such a language processing apparatus provides some purpose-specified dictionaries. What is meant by the term "dictionary" is arranged to systematize a header word and the information about the header word as one item and for an operator to easily retrieve a desired item with the header word.
The dictionary is recorded on a nonvolatile medium in a machine-readable format. Such a dictionary is referred to as an electric dictionary. When using the electric dictionary in doing machine translation, a word train (containing only one word) of a source language is used as a header word. The information accompanied with the header word contains parts of speech about the word train and a translated counterpart (target language) of the header word.
The known translation machine providing the electronic dictionary is normally arranged to display a translated word when an operator inputs a header word or a translated sentence when he or she inputs a sentence.
If a document to be processed by such a language processing apparatus contains a word not described as a header word in the electric dictionary, the working efficiency is remarkably made lower. As more header words the electronic dictionary have, more preferably the dictionary is. Likewise, for the machine translation, idioms of the original language may be registered together with words of the target language. As the electronic dictionary has more pairs of the word or idiom and its translated counterpart, the translating efficiency is made higher. The idiom is composed of a normally variable part and a fixed part. The variable part is, for example, "A" or "B" in the idiom of "from A to B" and the fixed part is the words of "from" and "to".
For example, however, to register an idiom as a header word, the following disadvantage may take place. Many idioms contain variable parts such as a numeral, a possessive pronoun, and a reflexible pronoun. Those parts may be variable in light of the subject and the other transformed word. To enhance the translating efficiency, two or more transformed idioms, each of which has different concrete words at the variable parts and the same fixed part, have to be registered as individual idioms. The registration of these idioms may put heavy burden on an operator for registering the electric dictionary. Further, as the header words are increased in number, the required storage medium of the dictionary is increased accordingly. Hence, such a registering method is not preferable.
To avoid increase of storage capacity of a dictionary, for example, a representative symbol for one word to be replaced with the variable part in the idiom is derived for the purpose of reducing the idioms to be registered in number.
As such a representative form of the variable part, if an idiom has just one variable word which has a unique part of speech, it is relatively easy to register or retrieve it. In some idioms, however, two or more variable parts may be contained or two or more parts of speech such as an adjective or an adverb may correspond to the variable part and a word train (phrase) may correspond to the variable part.
To register such an idiom having various representative forms, if a representative symbol is derived for each word of the variable part, the number of idioms to be registered is increased. This may put heavy burden on the registering operation, which may not lead to reduction of storage capacity.
In the case of building an electronic dictionary such as a fundamental dictionary or a user dictionary to be used in the known translation machine, the header word or its translated word is an idiom containing a variable part of speech such as a numeral, a noun, or an adjective, the variable part is replaced with a pre-defined special symbol when the idiom is registered. The replaceable words are limited as a specific group such as a noun, an adjective, and an adverb pre-defined in the system.
To register a weight unit group or a currency unit group, the operator has to write a component of a group to be used in the idiom one by one. It means that all the components has to be registered for registering one idiom.
For example, to translate the idiom of "be quoted at currency unit + figure" into the Japanese counterpart, all the possible currency units ".Yen.", "US$", "A$", "C$", "HK$", ".English Pound.", "DM", "FFr" and "SFr" has to be registered one by one such as "be quoted at .Yen.*m", "be quoted at US *m" and "be quoted at A$*m". "*m" used herein is a special symbol standing for a numeral. "*N" is a special symbol standing for a noun phrase.
In place, it is possible to use a part-of-speech group prepared in the system for registering such a unit without registering components one by one. For example, a group referred to as a noun phrase of a currency unit + figure is used for registering. In the above example, the phrase of "be quoted at *N" is registered. Assuming that a sentence of "The string should be quoted at need." is inputted, the word "need" is a noun and thus "at need" is made to be a noun phrase. This case is interpreted as "be quoted at *N". In this case, the idiom is not "be quoted at" but "at need". That is, this sentence has to be translated as "The string should be quoted/at need."
Further, consider registration of the idiom "at that moment". On the other hand. "at the moment" is also an idiom having the substantially same meaning. These two idioms have to be registered one by one though both have the substantially same meanings. Moreover, if the operator would like to register an idiom and its synonyms or an idiom and its antonyms as one group, for an idiom of "a majority of", an antonymous idiom of "a minority of" cannot be registered with it. If the operator would like to register some idioms as one; group, they cannot be registered at one time. They have to be registered one by one.
In the case of building the known electronic dictionary used in a fundamental dictionary or a user dictionary, when registering an idiom consisting of two or more words, even if each word may be varied, all the variations have to be registered one by one.
The foregoing known translation machine has a problem that it takes a long time to register an idiom in a dictionary and the using efficiency of the memory is worse. When specifying a large category such as a noun phrase in a variable part of the idiom, the proper translated counterparts of some inputted sentences cannot be obtained.
It is a first object of the present invention to provide a translation machine which has such a capability of registering an idiom as standing for a variable part in an idiom by a symbol or easily registering or retrieving an idiom if two or more variable parts are contained in the idiom or a word or a phrase is put in the variable part, thereby preventing reduction of a registering time, reduction of translating work or increase of storage capacity.
It is a second object of the present invention to provide a translation machine which is capable of efficiently using the memory, reducing a time in registering an idiom, and specifying a group sharing a certain feature in a variable part of the idiom, for enhancing the translating accuracy.
It is a third object of the present invention to provide a translation machine which provides such an idiom registering capability as registering two or more idioms as one idiom group.